


kalyāṇakīrti

by weaslayyy



Category: Hindu Religions & Lore, Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23241568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/pseuds/weaslayyy
Summary: When Rukmini is fifteen years old, Krishna Vaasudev emerges after three years at Guru Sandipani’s ashram and steps truly onto the battlefield of public opinion.
Relationships: Krishna (Hindu Religions & Lore)/Rukmini (Mahabharata)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24
Collections: Rangabhumi Round Two: An Indian Mythology and Lore Fanfic Exchange





	kalyāṇakīrti

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



“Have you heard?” 

It seems even the winds carry this question nowadays, the answer on every person’s lips -- yes, they respond, they have. Krishna Vaasudev has learned all he was to know at Guru Sandipani’s feet, rescued Sandipani’s son for his guru dakshina and gained his own conch in the process. 

He has returned home. 

Rukmini at 15 can hardly remember what life was like at 12, when Kamsa was still alive and her brother Rukmi away in Magadha. It seems as if the entire world has waited with bated breath for Krishna to learn how to wield arms and chant the Vedas, for even Jarasandha has not yet stooped to assassinating an acolyte. 

“This is only until the cowherd leaves the safety of his Guru’s lap,” Rukmi was often heard muttering as he turned up his nose at this meal not prepared as it would have been in Magadha, or that color of cloth that would have seemed so unfashionable in the Imperial Core. Rukmini, the only of Bhishmaka’s children allowed to love Vidharbha as her own, decided immediately that any man her brother hated as much as he did their home must be a very good man indeed. 

Betrayer, Rukmi calls him, kin-slayer. A savage from the wilds, untutored in the ways of men with honor. A usurper. 

But who did he betray, Rukmini asks the flowers of the garden where she often now finds her refuge, and what kin does Rukmi speak so highly of. A man who imprisoned his own cousin-sister, who imprisoned his own father? Even savages love those they call their own, and it is no honor to force women to suffer the birth-pangs behind bars. 

As for usurper, well, that is the easiest charge for Rukmini to answer to, at least in the mock debates she carries out behind the ashoka tree. It was Kamsa himself, who usurped his father’s throne, and it is King Ugrasena who now stands reinstated. 

One day, she will gather the courage to say as much within Rukmi’s earshot, but for now -- 

“Have you heard,” one of the servant-girls asks, breathless from running so quickly from the palace quarters where Rukmini probably should be sitting. 

Rukmini rolls her eyes. “That Krishna Vaasudev has returned to Mathura?” 

“No!” the girl exclaims. “That Krishna Vaasudev is coming  _ here _ . The messenger says that he expects to arrive tomorrow morning!” 

\--

The first days after Kamsa’s death are hectic, as is the case after all coups -- for days the streets thronged day and night with the bodies of Yadavas singing, weeping, fighting and loving as they had not been able to for nearly a generation. Liquor and butter each ran freely, dripping from the lips of earthen pots passed from person to person to person as they toasted their deliverance from the iron clutches of a tyrant. 

On the sixth day, the palace criers announce a coronation next dawn. On the seventh, nearly every man in Mathura is found lining the road, trying to catch a glimpse of their savior, the boy they believed would be king. Nanda’s son has been absent since Kamsa’s head rolled, but rumors run rampant as to his potential whereabouts within the city -- some claim to have seen him at the public baths, others say they saw him walking the banks of the river Yamuna. Some claim to have seen him laughing amidst the cowherd encampments at the outskirts, others swear they had seen him prostrate at the feet of the Lady Devaki, hands still stained with Kamsa’s dried blood while he used them to wipe away his birth-mother’s tears. 

Who is he, they wonder, and what type of king will he make? A cowherd by nurture even if by nature he be a god, and one without basic tutelage in arms or the ruling texts. How will he determine taxes, or maintain what remains of the Kamsa’s army? Will he be kind? Cruel? 

He could not possibly be worse than Kamsa, one of the merchants says with a laugh. The rest grow silent. Such a possibility had not even occurred to them, but -- the crowd shifts, suddenly restless. 

On the seventh day, the palace crier strides out into the brilliant light of the consecrated dawn and announces the first day of King Ugrasena’s second reign. 

“What?” screech the crowd as one, “but how?” 

“The usual way,” the crier responds, an unnatural display of humor. Krishna Vaasudev, he says, had crowned his venerable grandfather himself. 

“Then where is Krishna Vaasudev?” the masses demand. It is unprecedented for a man, even one like Krishna, nay  _ especially _ for one like Krishna, to refuse a crown rightfully his by conquest. Ugrasena, for all that he was once a great King, had lost the right to rule when he was deposed by his son. 

They will not accept, they say,  _ can  _ not accept until they see the truth with their own eyes. 

“Then look,” a voice laughs. As one, the people turn to see a boy draped in the garb of renunciates, hair shaved except for a single tuft walk out of the palace. A boy nearly a head taller stands behind looking the same. 

“I cannot be your King,” the first boy laughs, and suddenly the crowd finds itself agreeing -- how funny that they thought he ever could be! “My grandfather was a fine ruler in years past. With your help, I know he will be once more.” And so he will be, they agree. 

“And you?” one brave soul asks, “where will you go?” 

“To school of course!” 

\--

The stories have, over the course of the last few years, tangled enough to become legend. The Deliverer of Mathura, the Gopa of Gokul, the only Yadava male of an entire birth-year to survive Kamsa’s purge. Demon after demon destroyed by his hand, Chanur flat on his back and neck broken by a boy half his size. An elephant tamed, a woman’s back straightened, a bow broken, a tyrant beheaded, a kingdom given away. 

Ten years’ education done in two, a mission to find a brahmin boy’s bones resulting in his discovery ten years after his disappearance, a pirate defeated and his conch repurposed as Krishna’s own. 

Sometimes, Rukmini sits at the foot of her ashoka tree and tries to imagine the figure of Krishna Vaasudev. The rumors always insist he be taller, stronger, faster, than any of the men around him in order to accomodate the possibility for him accomplishing the extraordinary. But Rukmini herself has seen the Emperor, every five years when he would bring Rukmi to see the land Rukmi would one day rule on Jarasandha’s behalf. The Emperor is tall, strong, even deceptively fast when one considers the man’s sheer bulk. The women of Bhishmaka’s court go silent the three months he spends, quiet only sometimes broken by the shrieks Rukmini can hear sometimes when she finds a reason to walk past their part of the palace. 

Rukmi and all the rest of Jarasandha’s hostage princes have built themselves in the image of the Emperor. Rukmini has no great fondness for such men. 

It might be better, she tells herself one day, that Krishna Vaasudev be as he is in the stories the people believe -- fierce, cunning, relentless, remorseless. Merciful, as great men must be, but without kindness. Stern, heavyset. A man that could, in time, stand as a worthy opponent to Jarasandha, who could drag his own uncle by the hair and cut his head off with his own sword. But the years Rukmini has spent defending Krishna’s name in front of the court of her favorite flowers have allowed her to build up the idea of a man that could not possibly exist. She clings to even faint strains in the stories that imply he might be kind, intelligent, full of good humor and humility. Righteous, but endowed with grace. 

Her Krishna, she knows, is not real -- but he would be beautiful if he was. It was no longer fashionable to be beautiful, men preferring to establish their masculinity through longer and thicker mustaches as Jarasandha wore. The Krishna of Rukmini’s mind would be clean shaven so as to not hide his smile, always waiting to emerge from the corners of his lips at the first sign of something in which he could find joy. Lithe, where other men lumbered. Charming, where other men merely threw around the weight of their station. If he were real, she thinks she would be in love, and Rukmini does not think of herself as one of the women blessed to find happiness in such a state. 

Rukmini is fifteen, and feels for once that she is truly putting away the things of her childhood. Krishna Vaasudev has already arrived, and even if she has not yet been able to see him with her own eyes it is only a matter of time before  _ her  _ Krishna is lost to her for good, as inconsequential as a shadow in comparison to one’s physical body.

“At least he should be good, yes?” Rukmini turns her head up from where she sits, gazing at the branches above her but the Ashoka tree does not answer. “I don’t think I could bear it if I had spent the last three years in front of you defending a Krishna Vaasudev that does not exist at all!” 

“I’m certainly trying,” someone says, voice bubbling with mirth, and Rukmini hears more than feels her head snapping in the direction of the intruder. Her eyes widen. “But I will have to rely on you to tell me if I am succeeding -- I would hate to make an enemy of the first friend I seem to have in these parts!” 

The public was wrong, Rukmini thinks, even the thought tinged with hysteria inside the confines of her mind. She does not know how this is possible, and yet she gazes at the truth before her eyes. 

Krishna Vaasudev is beautiful. 

**Author's Note:**

> i....wrote this ..... literally just now because we LOVE COVID-19!!!!! i will..... at some point... expand this ....... and write it significantly longer and more coherent as u deserve because this is probably littered with typos and bad characterization because its basically a stream of consciousness now lol. 
> 
> love u !!!!!! i hope u like at least some bits!!!!!!!!! u deserve the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!!!! i pROMISE i will come back and write you a real and LONG fic !!!!!!! (also this was so much harder without being able to pester u about characterization lmao) <3 <3 <3 
> 
> everyone stay safe and indoors if u can!!!! we love a good social distance!!!!!


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